Vincenzo Viviani (Florence April 5th 1622 - September 22nd 1703) is a mathematician and Italian physicist, disciple of Galileo, a descendant of the ceramist Santi Buglioni.

Biography

Viviani is born and grows with Florence and makes its studies in a school Jesuit. When its intellectual abilities are noticed, the Large-duke Ferdinand II of Médicis allocates to him a purse for the purchase of books of mathematics. He becomes pupil of Torricelli and works on physics and the geometry.

He is assistant of Galileo in 1639 until the death of this last in 1642. Of 1655 with 1656, it publishes the first edition of a collection of its work.

In 1660, Viviani and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli calculate the speed of sound by measuring the difference between the flash and the sound of a gun. They obtain a value of 350 meters a second, much nearer than the 478m/s obtained by Pierre Gassendi, the speed of sound in the air with 0°C being of 331,29 m/s.

It publishes in 1659 an important treaty on the conical ones.

In 1666, the reputation of Viviani as a mathematician is recognized in all Europe. It starts to receive many proposals for an employment. The same year, Louis XIV proposes a station with the Royal Académie to him and Jean II of Poland the station of astronomer. Of fear of losing Viviani, the Large Duke appoints it mathematician of the Court. Viviani accepts it and declines the other proposals.

In 1687, it publishes Discorso intorno Al difendersi da' riempimenti E paves corrosione de' fiumi .

In 1690, Viviani publishes a translation of the elements of Euclide.

With its death, in 1703, Viviani leaves a work almost completed on the resistance of the solids, which then is supplemented and published by Luigi Guido Grandi.

One owes him the theorem of Viviani, used in the triangular statistical diagrams:

the sum of the distances from an interior point to an equilateral triangle at the three east coasts equalizes with its height .

and the problem of the vault quarrable (1692), which will be solved by Wallis: to find a window in a hemispherical vault so that the remainder of the vault is quarrable, i.e. whose surface can be written C ², where C is a constructible number with the rule and the compass .

In the years 1730, the Church authorizes finally the burial of Galileo in a tomb with a monument. This monument is built in the church of Santa Croce and is built with the funds that Viviani had especially held for this use. The remainders of Viviani were also moved in the new one fall from Galileo.

In its homage, a lunar crater bears its name.

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